Singkreis Mauthausen - Memento - Gedenkkonzert 50 Jahre Befreiung KZ Mauthausen

The Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp was the hub of a large group of German concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Sankt Georgen an der Gusen (Gusen) in Upper Austria, roughly 20 kilometres east of the city of Linz. The camp operated from the time of the "Anschluss", when Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich in early 1938, to the beginning of May 1945, at the end of the Second World War. Starting with a single camp at Mauthausen, the complex expanded over time and by the summer of 1940 Mauthausen had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe, with four main subcamps at Mauthausen and nearby Gusen, and nearly 100 other subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany, directed from a central office at Mauthausen.

As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen-Gusen were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. The subcamps of the Mauthausen complex included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates.The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex.
Mauthausen was classified as a so-called "category three camp". This was the fiercest category, and for the prisoners it meant "Rûckkehr unerwünscht" (return not desired) and "Vernichtung durch arbeit" (extermination by work).

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp,
the Singkreis Mauthausen together with der "Chor der Pfarre Mauthausen musica viva" gave a concert titeld "Memento". They produced an album with the same title with songs from concentration camps and the cantate "Memento.

The album contains the song 'Die Lebenden Steine' (The Living Stones), referring to a phrase used to describe the prisoners of Mauthausen-Gusen, who were subjected to back-breaking labour in the quarries surrounding the camp. The lyrics were written by Włodzimierz Wnuk in 1941, and set to music by Aleksander Kulisiewicz in Sachsenhausen in 1943.

Tracklist:

Moorsoldaten
Mein Vater wird gesucht
Die lebenden Steine
Dachaulied
Buchenwaldlied
Lied der Hoffnung
Ich träume
Herr, gebäre ein Volk
Bedenk, o Mensch
Verhöhnt und geschändet
Vom Leben hin zum Tod
Herr-Nie wieder

Singkreis Mauthausen - Memento - Gedenkkonzert 50 Jahre Befreiung KZ Mauthausen
(320 kbps, front cover included)